216 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CKEED OF SCIENCE. 



cultured, that, even for an explanation of the mysterious 

 universe in which we are, and for answer to all the 

 legitimate and intelligible questions that the mind of 

 man can raise, we must look to science and not to meta- 

 physics. Science alone speaks the words of truth and 

 reality, and metaphysics, as ever, where she pretends to 

 enlighten us and explain things, deals only with empty 

 abstractions converted into realities, or with fancies, 

 delusions, and chimeras. She raises insoluble questions, 

 and pretends to have given an answer ; she raises unreal 

 and unmeaning ones, with whose strange knots and 

 perplexities the mind that has foolishly allowed them 

 to enter contends laboriously and painfully, as sometimes 

 in dreams we struggle with strange and fantastic 

 problems, only to wonder and smile in the daylight, 

 after awakening, that such absurd questions should 

 have perplexed and tormented us. The metaphysical 

 questions are either insoluble and should not be raised, 

 or unreal and fantastical and need not be ; in either case 

 we may dismiss them for the future. Science will 

 answer the real questions. 



I do not consider this to be the whole truth of the 

 matter; nor the distinction made between science and 

 metaphysics the true one; for after all metaphysics 

 should be only another name for sound philosophy. But 

 the preceding is the view of Comte and his followers. 

 It is also pretty much the view of Mill and Bain, who 

 have handled philosophical questions in the positive 

 spirit, and of men who, like Professor Huxley, deride 

 at once Comte and the " pure metaphysicians." Accord- 

 ing to the late G. H. Lewes, himself a positivist, but who 

 fairly reflects the views common to all positive scientific 

 thinkers, the spirit of man in pre-positive ages had been 

 goaded and driven by an inquiring evil spirit within, 



